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I reckon that, Chromatics and Swans will be the contenders.

Chromatics might have it though, so far.

Really haven't got any time for Cloud Nothings though and that's had a fair few votes so far...

Thought the Walkmen album was complete pish though.

Mine is the best

Why not just wait?

- Swans, Roc Marciano, Titus Andronicus, Andy Stott, Hecker/Lopatin, Converge, Darren Hayman, Goat etc. etc.

as it stands, mine probably has Julia Hecker and Kendrick Lamar highest. maybe, I dunno

I don't really like that Motion Sickness of Time Travel album as much as most people seem to. it's ok. probably need to listen to it more.

also I've only heard a few bits of Chromatics, but it seemed pretty terrible. whatsthedeal

at first, only really liked two tracks. then five. then most. now all.

and each listen gets better

can't fault it

DiScuss.

Godspeed You! Black Emperor - Allelujah!
Mala - Mala In Cuba
Sun Araw, M. Geddes Gengras & The Congos - Icon Give Thank ** this one in particular...probably my album of the year.

the last Om one was decent as well.

so i just listened to the krallice record while playing super hexagon, i've got a headache. great though.

Going to have to hold off on the list for a bit now cos it sounds like this might be really ace.

Having been out of the country for the majority of the last three months, am playing catch up with a lot of recent releases... though impressed by many - Kendrick, Deftones, Metz, etc - the earlier releases I've had on constant rotation are bound to win out.

Excited to make a list of stuff I've missed too, always discover so much that slipped by at this time of the year.

But it really went down in my estimation after a few listens - it feels hollow...
I can't believe the people who've included the Why? record, it is shocking.

13 songs, no fillers.
But then again...i,m pretty alone on this it seems.....blast!

https://soundcloud.com/fervid-how

Interesting list. Still ages to go, of course, so everything could change.

1. Errors - Have Some Faith in Magic
Probably my most played, most loved, and most important album of the year. It's the soundtrack to my year, you know? The album that I'll listen to forever now and it'll remind me of getting my puppy, moving to Glasgow, etc etc. Pretty amazing.
2. Deftones - Koi No Yokan
Blew me away this. Quite astonishing how good it sounds. I have been risning it and I am still picking out new bass flourishes, sonic elements and other things. It's fucking fabulous.
3. Loscil - Sketches from New Brighton
The deepest and darkest album I've listened to this year. I can't get past how dense it sounds on my headphones. It soundtracked a hillwalk in the dusk and good christ it was incredible.
4. Arrange - New Memory
Yeah, I am a sucker for anything by Arrange, but this might be my favourite of his. It's so solid - really has improved how he sings on the tracks and the depth of the recoridng makes it seem widescreen somehow. Feels like a 21st Century Blue Nile album.
5. The Walkmen - Heaven
The most heartfelt record of the year - a true sunshine moment when i first heard it too, and it never fails to drop a big grin on my face everytime I listen to it. Probably my favourite album of theirs after You and Me now, all things considered.

Comments on the poll:
Not sure why Errors aren't featured a lot, there was a lot more buzz about them when the album came out. I am mostly confused by the inclusion of Chromatics - totally don't get it. Boring and over long.

Other albums that didn't make the list:
RM Hubbert - Thirteen Lost and Found
Grizzly Bear - Shields
Liars - WIXIW
Beach House - Bloom
Tim Hecker and Daniel Lopatin - Instrumental Tourist
The Invisible - Rispah
The Mars Volta - Noctourniquet

realised that of every album voted for, i've consciously listened to THREE of the things that have been voted for (why?, deftones, animal collective) and the latter two only once each, and the first is no great shakes.

my actual favourite album of the year is Birthmark - Antibodies, then my next two favourites are probably by my bands. no idea what i'd use to fill up the next two places.

waiting on the new Madteo album and I've not even dived into Flying Lotus or Mala yet for some reason. I know a few that are defo up there tho LV Sebenza and DJ Rashad Teklife Vol.1. Actress, LHF, Shackleton, Bass Clef, Mix Mup & Kassem Mosse, Henny Moan, Ekoplekz, Vessel.... all prob need a look somewhere. No idea.

Where are all the Tame Impala fans? It'll be one of my picks and I expected many others to agree.

describing 'Kill for Love' as "boring" and "dull" or anything similar, care to explain? Nobody seems to have developed their argument much further than this. In terms of it being "overlong", well, the more poppy cuts stuck with me instantly, but it was only after a couple of months that I realised how satisfying the record is as a whole. Massive cliche by now, but really needs to be listened to in the dead of night, preferably with rain drumming down the windows.

Not enough people have listened to the BATS album.

Couldn't get press if they dug up Jimmy Savile's corpse & sodomised it on the roof of Buckingham Palace, so I'm depressed but not surprised that the magnificent Something Rain isn't making any end of year lists.

Surprising lack of love for Claro Intelecto's Reform Club too.

5. Spiritualized - Sweet Heart Sweet Light

Easily their best album since the fabled ‘Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space’, ‘Sweet Heart Sweet Light’ takes everything that was good about the second half of their career output; the overindulgence, the choirs, the 10 minute guitar jams, the uprising symphonies, and throws it all against a wall whilst seeing what sticks. It’s what you’d expect from Spiritualized, and if the end result is good, then there’s nothing wrong with a bit of predictability sometimes.

4. Godspeed You! Black Emperor - ‘Allelujah! Don’t Bend! Ascend!

I imagine the announcement of a new Godspeed record and tour was the drone equivalent of a new My Bloody Valentine record. The words “indefinite hiatus” are always a bit worrisome, but GY!BE didn’t falter on their promise to return. And boy have they returned. While a few of these movements have been toured live previously (see: basically the entirety of Mladic in particular) the material sounds as fresh and as relevant as ever. As you’d expect from a GY!BE album, each of its individual parts build and grow over a long period until unleashing scores worthy (likely far outstrip to be honest) of the greatest of Hollywood soundtracks.

3. Actress - R.I.P.

Dense. Really really fucking dense. Like, a rave in a narrow back-alley that you have to walk down steps to get into with a low ceiling. In a black-hole.

2. Flying Lotus - Until the Quiet Comes

Flying Lotus is the kind of musician whose sound is instantly recognizable amongst the electronic discharge. Despite being inherently electronic, his music is distinctly human, and there are times during this album where you forget you’re actually listening to something that isn’t organic. The album slowly cruises along, occasionally throwing in a slightly nosier number, but the steady bass-lines hold the whole daisy-chain together. If you were a fan of ‘Cosmogramma’, you might want to sit down. This is an entirely different breed of animal. While ‘Cosmogramma’ threw you from one side of the room to the other, ‘Until the Quiet Comes’ rewards you with repeated listens, sounds not initially obvious below the surface. As the title suggests, this album’s a lot less bombastic, but it has the kind of flow and replayability that Cosmogramma struggled with, especially in the latter-half of the album. It might take a few spins to really appreciate the charm of ‘Until the Quiet Comes’, but once you sink in you won’t want to resurface.

1. Burial - Kindred EP

Am I allowed to pick an EP as Album of the Year? Probably not. Oh well, call the cops, because nothing came close to this Burial juggernaut at the beginning of the year. The best release from an artist with an already impressive library of dub-step classics to his name, the ‘Kindred EP’ steers more towards the layered and ambient sound he pulled off so effortlessly in tracks like Raver in his most recent album ‘Untrue’. While ‘Untrue’ made you want to dance on your feet [citation needed], tracks like Ashtray Wasp are more dance music for the head, sampled howling wolves and distant voices fade in and out of your consciousness. If there’s one thing that’s instantly noticeable about the album, it’s the incredible production values, quirks such as the crackle and pop adding to the eerie world of ‘Kindred’ instead of pulling you out of it. While only a little over half an hour, the albums seems to rush past you, despite each track being made up of only a few movements. While Burial’s contemporaries seem to be trying new ways to sound louder and louder, it’s refreshing, and probably a somewhat logical move, to hear someone try and broaden the scope of subtle movements and challenging rhythms. Much like Autechre tried stripping back on the noise in the early 90’s after the late 80’s rave movement, Burial has taken the post-2007 dub-step sound and given it the good rinse-through it deserves. If this is what Burial can give us whilst restricted to the two sides of a 7”, imagine what he’ll be capable of on an album next year.

1. Aesop Rock - Skelethon

I've loved this guy for years and I think he's had some issues overcoming people loving his early work and sorta forgetting about him. But this is one of those records you only make once in your lifetime, which deals with break ups, death and more importantly how you deal with those. He also dealt with leaving labels and having to produce his own work on a budget and it's a great record because of, not despite of, that. Lyrically dense as ever but musically warm, humorous, continually rewarding and the kind of album you could never write in your 20s, it's just glorious. I find something new every time I put it on.

2. BATS - The sleep of reason

I found this band because of these boards and bloody love them. It's been a pretty good year for rock but this is just great fun. All over the shop, energetic, frantic, inventive, danceable, loud, quiet, intricate, brash... I honestly don't know how it crams so much in. Lesser bands would have made this into an entire career. Basically, it's the fucking nuts.

3. Hot Chip - In our heads

I hated Hot Chip at first. Like, really hated them, presuming them to be utter frauds. Now, I think they're one of my favourite bands ever and they just get older and wiser. There is so much to love here and they're now regularly nailing ballads, chucking out brilliance such as 'Flutes' as an aside and crafting whole albums instead of great singles populated with vaguely fleshed out ideas. The best British electro pop band since New Order.

4. El-P - Cancer for cure

It's easy to overlook this one as it's not his grand opus maybe, BUT it's so much fucking fun. Samples every few seconds, deafening, relentless and so, so slickly produced. Putting on an El-P record is always a joy but it's great to hear him having fun and being more direct. I come back to it every few weeks.

5. Swans - The Seer

You know what, in hindsight I should have had FOTL here as I've spun it every other week all year long. BUT The Seer is one of those albums. It's like Scott Walker's Drift or that double operatic Knife album about nature. When it does click, it's amazing. I got stuck on a train the other day and got to listen to the whole thing solidly from start to finish and it was absolutely brilliant. Taken as a whole in the right frame of mind, for me it's a 10/10 for it's breadth and sheer 'fuck you' length. When not in that frame of mind however, it's a 7/10, could do with being a disc shorter and most songs being cut down to 4 minutes - which is actually more often than not. But because it is sometimes just so amazing, it deserves the love it gets, even if I personally rate the studio record beforehand FAR higher on an average day.

I genuinely feel a bit wrong leaving out Orbital (one of the best comeback records ever), FOTL (really brave record striving to do something different and 75% of the time succeeding), Four Tet (I know it's a bunch of singles, but they're FUCKING GREAT singles), but hey. Been a good year in my book...

1 to 20:
Bruce Springsteen – Wrecking Ball
Frank Ocean – Channel Orange
Jack White – Blunderbuss
Bob Dylan – Tempest
Fiona Apple – The Idler Wheel…
Kendrick Lamar – good kid, m.A.A.d city
Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros – Here
Green Day – !Uno!
Japandroids – Celebration Rock
Neil Young and Crazy Horse – Psychedelic Pill
Mumford & Sons – Babel
Jimmy Cliff – Rebirth
Leonard Cohen – Old Ideas
Best Coast – The Only Place
Dr. John – Locked Down
Cat Power – Sun
John Mayer – Born and Raised
Nas – Life is Good
Band of Heroes – Mirage Rock
Killer Mike – R.A.P. Music

I finally gave it a listen and it's pretty great.

I could name 5 if forced...but I haven't give some of these as much time as others

Mount Eerie (Clear Moon) Actress (R.I.P.)
Tame Impala (Lonersim) Flying Lotus (UTQC)
Beach House (Bloom) Purity Ring (Visions)
Port St. Willow (Holiday) Holy Other (Held)
How To Dress Well (Total Loss) GY!BE (Allulujah)
The xx (Coexist) Twin Shadow (Confess)

1.Title Fight - Floral Green: not actually a particularly spectacular album, but it's been a weak year and it's the one that stuck with me the most. What I love about this band is that they keep progressing with each record, and while they're hardly a revolutionary band sonically, they do what they do with such passion and aplomb that I can't help love it. Also every single track is a banger.

Converge - All Our Love etc: Because it's Converge, and they're one of my favourite bands on all time, they automatically get in

thought that record was made for DiS loving

...people use this phrase like a weapon, like it affords them some sort of pious plinth on which to stand and wield their worthiness.

sorry, not interested.

with regards to the Chromatics, of course its style over substance... somebody going to tell me Swans are any different? Fiona Apple, Sharon Van Etten, Frank Ocean? please... don't be so naive... its all varying degrees of affectation... (and for the record, i like all these records).

fortunately for me however, i often find there to be more truth in artifice, than in the bare truth itself...

Though I'm not much surer of it than I was when I started this thread. In that time, Tame Impala, FlyLo, Beach House, Goat, Grimes have all been considered at some point, among others.

Total Loss is top because it seemingly continues to improve. I seem to discover a new shade to it each listen, it has many emotional complexities. I just hope when it is finally "solved" it isn't in any way disappointing. Equally one of the saddest and funkiest records this year.

Clear Moon is a brilliant, shorter, synthesis of all Phil Elverum's previous great work. Feels as natural as always even with added synth.

And everyone should check out Held by Holy Other, beautiful Burial-esque night music. Got me stoked for the Mister Lies debut in Feb, which is very much cut from the same cloth.

Merry Christmas.

but don't think any of my top five have/will be mentioned, other than Efterklang, who will likely be my favourite album. Pleased to see that four other people have put it as their number one also.

the lack of love for the Field Music, Trouble Books and Emerald albums.

saying that only Field Music is in my top 5.

Unranked top 5, plus an unranked 7-12:

Bloc Party — Four
Now, Now — Threads
Moonface — Heartbreaking Recovery
A Place to Bury Strangers — Worship
Internet Forever — Internet Forever

Sleigh Bells — Reign of Terror
The Soft Moon — Zeros
Tamaryn — Tender New Signs
Cloud Nothings — Attack on Memory
Foe — Bad Dream Hotline
Cast of Cheers — Family
Japandroids — Celebration Rock

Thing about this year for me is that there's been a stack of 7.5-8.5 albums, but no real knock-your-socks-off, can't-stop-playing-it albums.

BP's latest is the closest, and possibly deserves an outright No.1 placing but after that, there's barely anything separating 2 through 8. I felt pretty bad cutting Sleigh Bells, Soft Moon and Tamaryn for the sake of drawing up a top 5.

1. Django Django - Django Django, 2. Sleigh Bells - Reign Of Terror, 3. Death Grips - The Money Store, 4. The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion - Meat + Bone, 5. Future Of The Left - The Plot Against Common Sense

Mix: DJ Hazard - Fabriclive.65
Remix: Battles - Dross Glop
Compilation: Andrew Weatherall - Masterpiece
Collaboration: The Orb featuring Lee Scratch Perry - The Orbserver In The Star House
Comeback: Orbital - Wonky

B team: Liars - WIXIW, The Raveonettes - Observator, Clinic - Free Reign, Chain & The Gang - In Cool Blood, Errors - Have Some Faith In Magic, Peaking Lights - Lucifer